


brave new world

by nasa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Endgame, i made a damn fix it, yes you heard me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 11:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18603499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/pseuds/nasa
Summary: Steve visits Peggy first. But he doesn't stay.





	brave new world

**Author's Note:**

> THIS CONTAINS ENDGAME SPOILERS. SO, YOU KNOW. DON'T SPOIL IT FOR YOURSELF.

Steve visits Peggy first.

Who else is there, after all? She cries when she sees him, big tears that roll down her cheeks and draw lines in the pale powder of her foundation. It takes Steve’s breath away to see her again, and when she offers a hand and asks him to dance, he can’t refuse. He presses his cheek into her forehead and breathes her in: she smells like sweat and roses, the faint metallic tinge of the perfume that she’d worn for as long as Steve had known her. Even in the war, she had managed to find herself a bottle whenever hers ran out.

It’s a lovely smell. But it’s not the smell of home.

“I’ll always love you,” she tells him, her fingers laced in his. Steve tips her head up and kisses her. His lips are tacky and wet from the lipstick; that, too, is lovely, but wrong all the same.

“I’ll always love you, too,” he says. “But I have to go.”

She gives him a cookie, on his way out the door. It’s funny; Steve didn’t know she could bake. “Daniel taught me,” she tells him, free hand coming up to touch her ring. “It took me a while to learn. But I did.”

Steve smiles. “I know the feeling.”

-

He takes a sabbatical, after that. It’s only 1970, after all; he has years to go, time and space spread out in front of him like the wrinkled pages of a map. At the time, he tells himself that it’s the itch in his legs that gets him going, the desire to see the world in a way he’s never really has, a way he never would be able to do in the age of the smartphone and social media.

He goes to Japan, first, because Tony always spoke so highly of it. The noodles are as good as Tony always promised, though Steve still can’t quite get over the mushy-slick texture of raw fish in his mouth. He heads to Thailand next, and eats mangos by the bucket, travels across the countryside on a creaky old bike he has to stop and fix every few dozen miles. His pace is glacial, nothing like the speed of the Quinjet, or the suit as Tony soars through the air, Steve in his arms, but something about the slowness is reassuring. It calms Steve’s beating heart, the adrenaline still pumping in his veins, to something more akin to the speed of a lazy wooden fan, circulating stale air high above Steve’s head.

He loses track of countries, after that. He goes to Vietnam, goes to Nepal, hikes through mountains in Tibet and considers the benefits of attempting a summit of Everest before he sees the price tag and abandons the idea. He moves through the Middle East, through deserts and dusky fields and gravel-rough roads and emerges in Eastern Europe. He sees castles in Romania, markets in Bulgaria, digs his toes in the sand on a Croatian beach. He avoids going anywhere he’s ever gone before as long as he can, but eventually, he runs out of excuses. That and a translation error land Steve in a train station in Northern Italy, near where the front lines of the war once stood.

Steve could turn around. But he doesn’t. He gets on another train, this one deliberate, and it leads him to the little hamlet village he remembers staying near, one particularly brisk winter night with the Howling Commandoes. A nice old lady had found them, camping in her field, and they had worried she was going to panic, but instead, she just brought them warm tea.  _For your hands,_ she said, and gestured to their fingers, which were turning a bruised purple in the cold.  _To warm you up._

Steve could go back there, now. All it would take is a click of a button, and he could live in a world with all the friends he had once lost. He could save Bucky from falling, take Peggy dancing, even help Howard to be a little less of a shitty father. But he won’t.

Because the thing is, Steve never really was exploring the world. He was running, has been this whole time. And Captain America doesn’t run. Captain America squares his ground. If you throw him down, he gets back up. If you kill him, he walks it off. If he gets tired, tough shit.  _I can do this all day,_ Steve thinks, and presses the button on his wrist that will take him to 2013.

-

“Who are you?” Tony demands when he sees him. He’s got a gauntlet on, and he shoves it in Steve’s face the second he sees him. “Where are you from?”

“It’s me,” Steve says, holding up his hands. “It’s Steve.”

“Steve’s on a mission,” Tony says, without moving a muscle. His hair is darker than Steve remembers it being, Steve thinks - he had thought Tony had been a salt-and-pepper kind of guy, even back in 2013, but apparently not. His laugh lines are the same, though, and so are his eyes: so bright. “Try again.”

Steve swallows hard. This is something he wasn’t expecting: how to content with his past self? Or alternate self, really: Steve doesn’t know the specifics. He never was the brains of this organization.

“I promise you, Tony, I really am Steve,” he says. “Run any test you want. It’s a long story, but I can explain.”

-

Tony takes him down to the workshop to explain. It’s jut as gorgeous as Steve had remembered, modern and bustling and full of Tony’s energy; it makes his heart ache, and he keeps getting distracted halfway through the story, until Tony pulls him back on track. Not that it matters; Tony keeps getting distracted, too, caught on science and logistics and logical impossibilities.

“So you’re from the future -“

“Alternate timeline -“

“Alternate timeline, right, where everything gets fucked up. And now you’re here. To stop it?”

Steve almost says yes. It would be an easier explanation after all.  _Yes, I’m here to stop it, to save as many lives as possible. To prevent us from making the same mistakes as before. To do better._

It’s true, but it’s only half-true, and Steve has long ago learned not to lie to Tony Stark. It’s not what he wants out of this, anyway, not really.

“I’m here to see you,” Steve says honestly. Tony blinks, clearly surprised by the response. Steve continues, “You die, in my timeline. And it - it broke my heart. To see that happen.” Steve takes a breath, blinking back sudden heat. “And I wanted to see you again. That’s it.”

“That’s - that’s it?” Tony’s face is almost blank. “You missed me, so you came back in time?”

It sounds ridiculous, when he says it like that. But Steve just nods. “Yes.”

Silence. Finally, Tony says, “Were we together? In your timeline? Like a couple, I mean.”

Steve manages a half-smile and shakes his head. He can’t quite find it in himself to meet Tony’s eyes, to see his expression: stupid, Steve thinks, to come all this way to see someone and then not even be able to look at them. “No. Sometimes, I wish - well, not sometimes. But no.”

There’s another beat of silence. Steve waits for the inevitable awkward rejection. He wouldn’t mind it, honestly. It’d be worth it, to see Tony again, to live in a world where he is here and living and whole.

But it doesn’t come. Instead, there is just a tentative touch on Steve’s arm, fingers ghosting over the crook of his elbow. Steve looks up.

“I don’t know what to do about our Steve,” Tony says, eyes big and brown and only a few inches away. “You seem - different, than him. I don’t know what changes. I don’t know you. But - I wouldn’t give up on it just yet.”

Steve’s breath catches in his throat. “No?”

“No,” Tony says. “Come on, let’s get you some food. You look hungry. Maybe you can tell me a bit more about this Thanos guy.”

-

Tony’s right: this timeline’s Steve is different.

Steve doesn’t know what happened. He barely changed anything, at least on his own personal jaunts into time: just had a few words with Peggy, and drank a few beers across Asia, but apparently, that made some sort of difference. The Steve here is harder, and colder, more angry. Steve doesn’t like him.

“He’s been through a lot,” Tony says, when Steve shares his thoughts. Before Steve can open his mouth to retort, Tony is shaking his head and smiling, “Which nobody would know better than you. Right. Time travel. It’s a lot to get used to, you know.”

“For a genius brain like yours?” Steve teases. “I thought nothing was hard to get used too.”

Tony smiles. “That’s what she said,” he says, and Steve finds himself laughing, joyous and light in a way he hasn’t felt in years. From beside him, Tony’s expression takes on almost a wondering taste, as though he’s shocked anyone could get Steve to laugh like that.

And, honestly, Steve doesn’t blame him. Probably as a consequence of whatever changes made Steve different, the team is different, too. They’re more distant, less tight knit. They didn’t take down HYDRA together, and, as Tony tells Steve, nobody had even called Tony after the conundrum with the Mandarin to see if he was all right.

“It’s not a big deal,” Tony had shrugged, when Steve had gaped. “We’re just not like that. It’s fine. What do I care?”

But Steve knows he cares, because this is the man who built a tower just for them. This is the man who personalized them suites, who built Steve suit after suit, who built Natasha weapon after weapon, Clint arrow after arrow, and Steve knows he would be all-in if anyone showed the slightest bit of interest. Steve takes it upon himself to do that.

Other Steve is resistant to the change, but everyone else goes willingly enough. They move into the Tower, each to their own respective floors; Steve helps the cleaning crews dust them off in the days before everyone’s arrival. In the end, it is almost like the world Steve left, but still different, so different, and Tony - well.

Tony is there through all of it. He’s there during the ups and there during the downs, ready with a tub of a ice cream on a low day or a funny movie on a high. He drags Steve out to restaurants, to baseball games, to nearby cities and on weird questions that Steve still doesn’t understand and it makes Steve feel full and warm and loved.

“Thank you,” Steve says one day, on just one of those strange occasions. They’re on the roof of the Tower, searching for Pokemon on Tony’s phone.

Tony glances up from his screen to frown at Steve. “For what? I’m not letting you have this, you know.”

Steve shakes his head, feeling the wind rustle his hair. “Not for the game,” he says. “For everything. For - just for everything.” Steve had never thanked Tony, in his own timeline; now, it is one of his greatest regrets.

Tony blinks. “Of course. Steve, you - you don’t need to thank me for that.”

“But I do,” Steve says. He takes a step closer to Tony, and Tony mimics it. They were close already; now they’re only a few feet away. “Tony, you gave me a home. Here, and everywhere. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Tony says again. There’s a brief moment, a held breath - but then Tony’s phone pings, and he’s stepping back. “Anyway, if you’re thanking me for everything, you know that technically includes this, too?” Tony waves the phone, but it still takes Steve a second to get it, too caught up in trying to calm his own racing heart.

“Fine,” Steve says. “Then thank you for the game, too.”

Tony looks up and him, there and gone, a flash through his lashes. “Don’t mention it,” he says, and clears his throat. “Oh, look, there’s one right there! Fuck, yeah, I’ve been looking for this sucker for fifty fucking years -“

And it’s not exactly what Steve had hoped for, but it’s so much better than what he left. It’s  _Tony._ Steve follows him to the other side of the roof to make sure he doesn’t trip.

-

Tony is the same in every universe: bright and burning, all-consuming, warming Steve down to his toes no matter how cold the world may get. Every day seeing him alive is a gift that Steve doesn’t let himself forget. The littlest things make Steve smile, now - the way Tony frowns down at the coffee machine in the morning, as he tries to get it to feed him without opening his eyes; his strange, whooping laughter when someone makes a joke that takes him by surprise; the glint of sunlight over the silvery scars on the back of his hands, his arms, his chest.

Tony catches him staring often, now. “What?” he always asks, when he does. He never shifts self consciously, like Steve would, but then he’s a man who’s grown up in the lime light. Steve wasn’t fit to be a public figure: Tony was built for it.

“Nothing,” Steve says.  _I am so glad I came back for you,_ he thinks.  _I would give it all up a million times over to be here, to be with you._ “Just admiring the view.”

-

This universe’s Steve dies in D.C., when the Helicarrier comes down.

Bucky kills him. Steve doesn’t know what’s to blame, if this Bucky is different, too, or if this Steve’s hard edges just drove him down. It doesn’t really matter, Steve supposes: he’s dead.

Iron Man fishes his body out of the river, and they hold a memorial in Arlington. It’s a beautiful ceremony, Steve thinks, but not one that he personally would like. That honor belongs to the private ceremony the Avengers hold at Stark Tower, in the game room where the team spends most of their time together. It’s a bit awkward - this Steve didn’t spend much time with them, after all, and what he did was quiet and stilted - but it’s honest. Steve thinks any version of himself would appreciate that.

Tony finds him afterwards. He’s in the kitchen, tending the potted plants on the windowsill. They were there before Steve moved in, but they were dying, then. “I don’t have a green thumb,” Tony had said when Steve had asked. “I keep meaning to make a robot to water them, but I never remember to do it. Jarvis, add it to the list.”

“Don’t bother,” Steve had said, catching Tony’s wrist in his hand. “I’ll do it.”

It’s his daily chore, now, one he takes pride in. Watering the plants. Checking the soil. Adding fertilizer, pruning any dying or infected leaves. It’s soothing, both the routine and seeing the result of his work growing green and tall in front of him.

Steve is caught up in it enough that he doesn’t hear Tony enter until he clears his throat in the doorway. “Hey,” Steve says, smiling when he sees him. “You holding up okay?”

He turns back to duck his hands under the faucet, rinsing the dirt off them.

“Steve,” Tony says, suddenly directly behind him, and then there’s a hand on his shoulder, turning him around. “Steve,” he says again, and then he’s kissing him.

His lips are warm and rough and soft, all at once, chapped and slick. Tony’s beard scratches at Steve’s jaw and chin. He smells like metal, Steve thinks, warm metal and motor oil and what Steve thinks might be Axe body spray. “Steve,” Tony says, between kisses, “Steve, Steve -“

“Shh,” Steve murmurs, bringing up a hand to splay on Tony’s back. Tony melts into him, body lithe and compact and built perfectly to mold into Steve’s curves. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you. Hey.”

“I think I love you,” Tony says. He sounds half-frantic at the thought, and his hands are trembling where they rest on Steve’s cheeks, but he looks sure, too. “Steve, I -“

“Shh.” Steve wraps his other arm around Tony’s shoulders and tugs him close, until Tony tucks his face into Steve’s jaw. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I can’t lose you,” Tony whispers, voice hoarse against Steve’s throat.

Steve swallows hard. “I’m not going anywhere.” He tightens his grip. “This is right where I want to be. Here and nowhere else. I’m here.”

It’s not an end: it’s a beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> find me at nasafic.tumblr.com
> 
> if people are interested, I might have a fluffy sequel to this, so let me know if that's the case!


End file.
